


worthy

by starryvin



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Destroy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 06:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20903258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starryvin/pseuds/starryvin
Summary: On Earth, after the Reapers fall, Garrus has little time to think. Like, really think.And then suddenly: he has to.





	worthy

**Author's Note:**

> “To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.”  
― George MacDonald

Garrus is not spiritual.

Sure, he curses the Spirits, talks about Heaven and its bar. But it's all just rethoric and jokes. Words to distract him from the inevitable. That spirits and ancestors and heavens and gods are all fine until you really have to start _believing_ instead of simply _knowing_. Then it's a lost cause because he has seen so much, he has seen Protheans, mystical Protheans, reduced to bugs, he has spoken to beings older than his own species and then watched them die like everything else does. Has watched the combined Citadel fleets strike down a god.

Heaven doesn't exist. Spirits don't exist. When sentient beings die, they just die. No matter their strenght or age or status.

Scouring the ruins for the lost, he doesn't spare a sliver of energy to anything non-essential. He's stuck on Earth for the time being,_ in London of all places_ says Ashley, and there are people and their empty corpses in the rubble left by the falling Reapers. He's digging and searching and listening and most of all trying to figure out all the damn _dogs_ \-- which ones is he supposed to follow, which are there for trauma therapy, and how the hell do the humans know which furry, four-legged animal is a dog and which is not?

And when he goes to the barracks at the end of the day he is drained, drained, drained of all his energy. He feels like he is asleep before his head hits the pillow. His dreams reflect nothing but the confusion his waking mind feels. "The time for mourning will come" is a mantra everyone around him seems to repeat but he can't quite even grasp what he should be mourning first, he is so deep into the haze of an enormous victory that still feels raw and hollow.

Until, that is, until the day Tali comes bounding, stumbling, rolling down the veritable mountain of rubble they are working near, yelling his name at the top of her lungs and exciting all the dogs. The humans look disapprovingly as Tali screams even louder.

"They found her!"

"You're going to have to be a bit more specific," Garrus calls out because there are quite a few 'she's missing still. "We've dug up four already and it's not midday yet!"

Tali doesn't slow down when she's in the indoor voice distance as he'd expected. Instead, she just speeds up and-- _oh shit_\--

"No, you bosh'tet! _Her!_" Tali screams as she crashes into him and sends them both to the ground. The dogs and the handlers watch with interest as their heads bang together. Tali isn't even fazed. "Shepard! They found Shepard!"

Absolute horror floods his body. He is not prepared for this. He hasn't given a single conscious thought to Shepard since the horrible realization upon hearing of the destruction of the Citadel, only his nightmares have ever reminded him. Flashes of red and grin and hair and, and that look she gained sometime after Udina's betrayal, and he has compartmentalized everything about her.

But they found Shepard and now they will have a hero's funeral and he's not even remotely ready--

"She's alive, Garrus, they found her alive!"

He runs into Liara on the way; or rather, he runs her down and doesn't stop to answer her calls. He feels like a drunk krogan with the way he smashes into the door frame instead of making it through, then stumbles gracelessly to the makeshift reception--

"Room four," the lady behind the desk says when she glances up at him. As soon as he pushes himself off and towards the room he has no idea what she looked like -- she could have been Wrex for all he knew and he would have had no idea--

Tali must be alerting the others right now, he doesn't have long to get himself under control.

As soon as he bursts through the door he knows that nothing in this world will give him enough strenght to compose himself in that amount of time.

Shepard is laying there in a half-sitting position, sans a leg, pale and unmoving, gorgeous red hair shaved on one side and blood-crusted on the other. A brace holds her neck and head still, screws boring deep into her thin, human skull. He has seen so many shattered human skulls in the last few days that he can comfortably say something must be wrong in the head of someone who'd pit that against a krogan's, and that is yet another example of a joke he's made without realizing who he's honouring. Shepard's chest is rising and falling in a soft rhythm, bare and tagged with so many leads. Her skin is lacerated and bruised.

She has never looked as damn beautiful.

They find him doubled over in a chair in the corner, trembling and hiding his face from view between his knees. Wrex booms out a laugh and Ashley joins him, hysterical and shrill. Joker walks over to Garrus, slumps into the chair next to him and makes the most horrible snivel.

"I hate her, have I ever told you that?" he asks with a voice thicker than Garrus has ever heard it. "Two times, my God. I'm gonna go kill myself and then come back, let's see how she'll feel…"

Liara has tears in her own eyes as she comes over to rub Garrus's arm.

He loses the week after that. He doesn't know what happens outside the hospital, nor does he want to. He washes Shepard's head, her gorgeous, soft hair, he keeps the incisions of the frame clean. He talks to her like a madman. Her coma is induced and the doctors assure him that once she comes off the medicine she will wake up, but he can't help but be fucking terrified that she won't, that this hope is going to result only in disaster and sorrow. He knows he cannot stomach any more.

Then, one day, a doctor walks in with a couple of nurses and smiles at him.

"Well, you've been guarding her well. We're going to pull the meds keeping her under."

Garrus, having stayed awake for most of the last eight days, only sleeping in little fits, and eating only what Liara managed to cram down his throat… his head starts spinning and he has to sit back down to avoid fainting.

"Call the rest of them," he manages. "I have to call everyone."

"I advise against that," the doctor says. "We should keep the occasion calm. They will get their time, but it would be best for her to only have you here for now."

Anxiety floods him. He can't be the one responsible for being the first thing she sees, he is ugly and dirty and battle-scarred. Despite all of the victories, only one thing is on his mind. Shepard's red hair through his scope, standing between revenge and him, and the thought he'd had: if his finger twitched, if his composure failed that would be _it_…

And she had put herself in his hands. Unthinking. Trusting fully. Then again, in the Collector base, she'd trusted him with the rest of the team. Hunting down the mad doctor, even. They'd barely known each other and yet, she had trusted him to make the call for a man's life.

"Okay," he says. "What do I need to do?"

**Author's Note:**

> I fucking love Garrus
> 
> I want him to have everything
> 
> I want him and Shepard to grow old together


End file.
